In the preparation of flexible, elastomeric or high-elongation epoxy resin systems, flexibility and low Tg are typically introduced into the system through the epoxy resin, the curing agent or both.
Epoxy resins which impart flexibility to cured epoxy resin systems include epoxidized vegetable oils, glycidated dimerized fatty acids and poly(propylene oxide) glycols of various molecular weights having glycidyl end groups. Epoxidized vegetable oils are inexpensive but cure very poorly, if at all, with aliphatic amines at room temperature. They do cure with strong acid curing agents but the resultant cured materials are weak and easily torn. Glycidated dimerized fatty acids are expensive low-volume products prepared by a difficult batch process. They have limited storage stability, and cured materials prepared with them tend to have high water absorption. Glycidated poly(propylene oxide) glycols are also expensive low-volume resins which tend to cure relatively slowly, and which tend not to give high network strength.
Curing agents which impart flexibility to epoxy systems include long-chain poly(propylene oxide) diamines, “dimer diamines” produced by conversion of dimerized fatty acids to nitriles and subsequent hydrogenation of the nitrile groups to amine groups, and condensates of dimerized fatty acids with amines containing one primary and one secondary amine group (such as N-(aminoethyl)piperazine or aminoethylethanolamine) or two secondary amine groups (such as piperazine). All of these curing agents have various disadvantages. The long-chain poly(propylene oxide) diamines cure epoxy resins extremely slowly at room temperature, often taking more than a day to gel the epoxy resins even when highly accelerated. The “dimer diamines” are faster curing than the long-chain poly(propylene oxide) diamines but are very expensive and, like the poly(propylene oxide) diamines, tend to give cured systems with low tensile strength at given elongation.
The condensates of dimerized fatty acids with amines containing one primary and one secondary amine group or two secondary amine groups (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,127,508 and 6,500,912) overcome a number of these disadvantages in that cure is fairly fast and also the cured products have relatively high tensile strength at a given elongation level. However, a major disadvantage of these dimer acid-amine condensate curing agents is their high viscosity, generally well above 10 Pa-s (10000 cP) and often above 30 Pa-s (30000 cP) at 25° C. The high viscosity renders mixing and degassing at room temperature fairly difficult. The viscosity of the curing agent can be reduced by addition of standard polyamine curing agents such as aminoethylpiperazine and other ethyleneamines, and also by nonreactive diluents such as ethoxylates of detergent-range alcohols. However, the low amine hydrogen equivalent weight of the polyamines severely limits the amount of polyamine which can be used as a diluent without unacceptable loss of cured resin elongation. This maximum amount is typically insufficient to give the desired viscosity reduction. When the nonreactive diluents such as ethoxylates of detergent-range alcohols are used, the incorporation of enough diluent to reduce viscosity significantly will tend to cause the cured resin products to become soft and weak (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,127,508, Example 4).
In light of the above, there is a need in the art for curing agents for elastomeric epoxy resin systems which are inexpensive, cure rapidly at ambient temperatures, have low viscosity at ambient temperatures, and which produce cured elastomeric epoxy resins exhibiting improved tensile strength and elongation when compared to the prior art resin compositions.